Lumicon OIII filter gone spotty...

[Mokusatsu (Australia)]

My Lumicon OIII filter looks fairly normal to reflection, the coatings are clean and intact, but when I look through it (holding it up to the light), the best way to describe what I am seeing is it looks like an agar culture dish with bacteria growing on it, it's like the coating has clumped together into dense grape-like clusters on a relatively clear background.

The image through the eyepiece is dimmer than I remember it being, but it does still make nebulae pop out with high contrast.

For the last ten years it has been unused, sitting in clean and dry storage in the original jewellery box wrapped in bubble wrap, and I don't believe it has been exposed to anything harmful or cleaned improperly.

Is this what happens to these filters eventually or is it faulty, or is this likely to be due to it being improperly cleaned or coming into contact with chemical vapours or something?

Am I just up for a new filter?

[Domol (Domenic)]

My Lumicon OIII is 10yo and still looks very greenish when held to the light. If it still can make Planetary nebula magically appear out of nowhere, then i'd say it's still ok. Cheers Domenic

[bytor666]

Does it look like this one? If it does, get rid of it and get a new one. The newer Lumicon filters have a harder coating which will not fade like the older ones do. The older ones fade over time because they used to "sandwich" in layers.

The one in my pic was purchased used....I told the seller what I saw and he asked me to DESTROY it, so that it wouldn't circulate and nobody else would get it and use it this way!



I've heard others say that theirs still work ok this way...so you don't REALLY have to destroy it unless you have OCD like I do.....LOL

[bytor666]

So...Here is what I did to it.

After I did this, I was fully refunded.

Cheers,